Detective

Detective

With his success as a firefighter, and the large emptiness of his mansion, Samson starts feeling lonely. By coincidence, he falls for his maid, Jacklyn Ratliff, who presently moves in. (She accepted, despite Samson’s insistence that he install a pole in the bedroom; good thing she waited to see what exactly he was talking about.) By becoming a playable character, she can no longer be a maid… but she does have interest in rooting through people’s homes and personal lives. What better career for someone who’s nosy than to be a detective?

After setting up her outfits and a quick trip to the salon for a tramp stamp, Jacklyn heads over to the police station, which now has a new “Join Investigative Career” interaction. Just like that, she’s a card-carrying detective, ready to work some cases.

Being a detective is odd in that there are no work hours: Jacklyn can opt to do no cases for a week, or as many as she can cram in. She draws a weekly stipend like Samson, and also will get cash from successfully completing cases.

Accepting a Case

Jacklyn is so pumped about having her new career that she wants a case right away. She drives home, buys a computer, and uses the “Investigator… | Search for Investigator Case” interaction. This is the more proactive method: she could also just hang out at home and wait for a phone call. Like I said though, Jacklyn is eager, and wants to find something right away. She gets a popup box explaining the case, and accepts it immediately.

Above Jacklyn’s moodlet display is a popup with a button explaining what to do next, sort of like when you do quests while traveling abroad (or, more accurately, like the revamped Opportunity system). I merely click the button that says “Interview,” and Jacklyn automatically jumps in her car to drive over and see what the problem is with her client. Apparently, her client had his computer hacked, and lost some files. Seems like turnabout is fair play here.

Jacklyn heads home and gets back on her computer. She selects the special “Hack Paulo’s Computer” command. There is no interaction here: Jacklyn pecks away at her keyboard, and after a couple hours, she manages to hack the hacker and retrieve the files. The next part of her quest is to turn in her findings back to her client.

Now, the open hours of the job really pays off here. It’s late evening and she hasn’t spent any time with Samson, not to mention she’s hungry. There are no time limits for the next step here, so she stops working and just has a nice dinner with her boyfriend. It’s the next day, while Samson runs over to the firehouse for a few hours, when Jacklyn actually goes over there to turn in her case findings.

Legalized Stalking

Jacklyn picks up some cash and job experience, and is now free to do something else. Though she could take another case, she decides to do a stakeout, which also helps add to her job experience. This one is pretty simple: she just goes to a lot, then interacts with any part of the ground on the lot. Rather than just a “Go Here” command, she, being a detective, gets a special “Stakeout” command. After selecting it, Jacklyn sets up shop and just watches.

…Oh yeah, that’s not obvious at all. Anyway, she has to hold the stakeout position for several hours, doing literally nothing else. Al Guerra—our player-controlled mummy from our World Adventures guide, you may recall—comes along and actually breaks the stakeout because she’s shocked to see a mummy. I don’t really blame her, but I am annoyed that this resets the stakeout clock. I do the order again, and sit back to watch her make a fool of herself for a couple hours. After that, she breaks the action automatically, and I am alerted that she can now write a report about it. (Getting the wish to do doesn’t hurt either.)

However, we need to point something out here: even though she has a wish to write a stakeout report, the option is nowhere to be found! The reason is because the stakeout didn’t amount to anything, as told by the message center. Sometimes, stakeouts don’t actually turn up anything noteworthy, and in that case, it’s essentially just a giant waste of time. If there had been something to write about, Jacklyn would have gone to the computer and picked the “Investigator… | Write Stakeout Report” command. As it is, with nothing more to do, Jacklyn works on her logic a bit until a call comes in for a new case.

Complex Cases

Her next case is a bit more complicated, as she is tasked to get some dirt on another Sim that her client wants discredited. Specifically, Jacklyn is to sift through the garbage can and mailbox of the target. This time, there is no button to go to the target, so we need to find them. The target in this case is Amie Landgraab, and unfortunately, Jacklyn doesn’t know her personally, so her tag location won’t show up on Map View. However, I could go to Edit Town mode long enough to find her… but we all know where the Landgraab Mansion is, don’t we? Especially with the “See Location” button on the quest box that pops up.

Well, geez, that’s one way to do it: Jacklyn can easily break in and get some evidence. Still, she’s only supposed to check out the trash and mail… but then, she’s also got the Kleptomaniac trait, doesn’t she? Ah, decisions, decisions… well, I’m writing the guide here, and we don’t have time to waste. Your mileage, of course, might be a little different.

Anyway, Jacklyn shows up, and the game helpfully shows me that this is, indeed, the correct place: a giant magnifying glass is at the base of the mailbox, and (off-camera) at the base of the trash can as well. Can’t get more obvious than this…

After searching through both the trash and mail, Jacklyn not only fins what Al Guerra wanted her to find, but she finds additional dirt that she can use to blackmail Amie for some cash. Jacklyn is a Klepto, as we know, and has no scruples, so she goes ahead and does the blackmail, and then also turns in the case. She’s double-dipping into success, and making a tidy profit off it to boot!

…Or tries to anyway. Turns out, Amie isn’t keen on paying up, and Jacklyn can’t really force her. This has to do partly with her low career level, and partly with her low Logic level. She’ll get there eventually. Right now though, it’s best to just turn in the case and get some job experience!

Jacklyn collects a service award from City Hall for her efforts. After that, she notices that there are a few hours left in the day before evening falls. Jacklyn decides to get a little extra bit of boost by going to the police station. Though she is a private detective rather than a government-paid cop, she can still do low-level police work in the police station for some extra experience and cash. Doing this is like having a conventional job for her: she just goes into the building and disappears until I pull her out. In this case, I leave her in for awhile with the job strategy “Meet Cops”… might be good to have some of the boys in blue on her side later on down the road.

After a few more days and cases, she gets one where she has to question some random Sims around town. Unless the case requires a specific Sim to be interviewed, you can get through the objectives by interviewing anyone, other than people who live in the detective’s lot. That means Jacklyn won’t get any information out of Samson, but she just runs over to the nearest community lot and starts randomly asking everyone around her questions. The nice thing is that she doesn’t even need to know the Sim she’s questioning: as long as the Sim actually lives there—that is, he’s not a tourist—then he’ll answer Jacklyn’s question. She asks her questions, and none of the Sims know anything… but it doesn’t matter. She asked three different Sims, and was able to turn in the case as complete.

The next case has Jacklyn snooping around the park for clues. Again, this is a simple command: just click the lot, and “Snoop For Clues” appears. Easy enough, right? Shortly thereafter, Jacklyn needs to get information out of a guy. She’s got three fun options here...

Merely ask, bribe, or… what’s this… assault? Oh hell yes! Jacklyn doesn’t have time to waste and decides to throw down! She is lucky to win this fight: her Athletic skill is at level zero, and won because her opponent wasn’t much better. This isn’t the command to use if you’re weak and your opponent can bench press his house. Bribing works just as fast too, of course, but you’ll be coughing up some of your hard-earned household treasury to do so. Getting friendly takes the longest but is no-risk, and who knows, you might get a new friend out of it. Not that Jacklyn cares, of course. Roughing up informants is just part of the job, or so she says.

Things don’t seem to be progressing very fast for Jacklyn, at least not compared to Samson’s firefighting career. Looking over things… ah, her Logic is only up to Level 3. Time to work on that, using Samson’s telescope. The thing with these interactive careers is, although there is no minimum of any given skill level to gain job experience, having as much of the skill as you possibly can will lead to the fastest promotions.

Here on out, it’s pretty much the same thing, just repeated forever: pick up cases, solve them, and rise through the ranks! It’s not very long before Jacklyn hits level 10 (especially once I start going all-out with her Logic skill), but it’s still the same system for cases from start to finish.

Detective Q&A

I forgot whose house to visit to root through their stuff… and there’s no button this time to go there! What do I do?

Simply open the Opportunities Panel in the main interface. Career “quests” so to speak are listed there, and you’ll get all the details you need—such as whose house you need to visit—from that screen. Note that you still won’t see what house it is exactly on the map, so unless you know your target personally—and therefore they are flagged a friend and can be seen with tags in Map View—you’ll need to hunt around a bit. You can always go into Edit Town mode temporarily, find your target, then get back into the game and do what you need to do.

I’m supposed to ask other Sims questions. I found a Sim, but I don’t see the command to ask them about the case. Where is it?

The command will not come up if you try interviewing Sims that live in the same house as the detective, and it won’t come up if you try interacting with tourists. The command should come up in the main pie menu; that is, it’s not under “Friendly…” or “Romantic…” or “Special…” or anything like that.

I did a stakeout, but when I go to the computer, I can’t find the command to write a report about it. Where is the command?

After a stakeout is finished, you’ll need to check the message center and see if anything actually resulted. If your Sim says something like, “That stakeout didn’t amount to much,” then there simply isn’t anything to report, and therefore the command will not appear. Also, remember the stakeout command could break, such as if a fire starts nearby or the Sim gets surprised at something. If the stakeout does complete and the message says that something interesting happened, you’ll find the command at the computer under “Investigator…”

I clicked the button for my Sim to go do something. It seemed that he stopped though after I gave the command… why did this happen?

It seems that when you stop focusing on the Sim, sometimes he forgets what he’s doing. For example, say you click the button to go interview someone. Your Sim may arrive there, but then forget that he’s supposed to interview the target, and just instead strikes up a friendly conversation. This consistently happens when you switch Sims that you’re dealing with; that is, if you select a different family member while your detective is en route to the target. Just give the original command again, and everything should be fine.